The Wolf of Wall Street heavily censored in the UAE

Oscar-tipped blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street has been heavily cut for its UAE release, cinemas have warned filmgoers.

Approximately 45 minutes of material has been removed from Martin Scorsese’s real-life satire, which details the exploits of a rouge Wall Street trader, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who defrauded investors out of millions of dollars.

As well as complete scenes which have been deemed unsuitable for regional audiences, much of the dialogue has also been heavily edited.

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The hotly anticipated film is already attracting significance awards attention, with DiCaprio winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor in Musical or Comedy on Sunday January 12.

But the movie is also already notorious for another reason: featuring more cuss words than any other feature fiction ever released.

Scorsese is no stranger to profanity. The reported 506 uses of one swear word in The Wolf of Wall Street sees the cuss-friendly filmmaker beat previous profanity record holders Casino (1995), which featured 422 uses of the same offending article, and Goodfellas (1990), which reportedly featured 300 uses of the vulgar expletive.

However in the UAE most of the offensive dialogue has been removed by censors, either by muting the audio temporarily or chopping chunks from scenes mid sentence, which produces a jarring effect for viewers.

While the internationally released movie runs to 180 minutes, Reel Cinemas list the run time as 135 minutes for the UAE cut.

Calculations suggest there are approximately 2.8 uses of the offering word per minute in the international release.

Reel Cinemas at The Dubai Mall posted disclaimers outside its box office on Thursday: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street contains muted words, and some scenes have been removed as they were not considered suitable. Reel Cinemas has no control on the censorship and we apologise for an inconveniences caused.’

The film carries a 15+ rating in the UAE, rather than a harsher 18+ certificate.

It is not clear how much control the film’s producers – Scorsese and DiCaprio themselves – have to limit the release of a censored movie.

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At least the cinemas should play fair and indicate when a movie is cut.
Not recommended to watch this movie in the UAE!

Ahmed Ali Jan 22, 2014 02:50 pm

Another reason not to go to a film here in UAE

Jesse Pinkman Jan 20, 2014 08:24 am

Another victory for BitTorrent.

Melina Jan 15, 2014 01:22 pm

Strongly agree with Chris. Very sad. I've changed my plan of going to watch that movie in the UAE...

Chris Jan 14, 2014 12:50 pm

It's interesting that someone out there is allowed to see the full version of the movie (and that seeing it doesn't corrupt them) and to decide what parts need to be censored, but the rest of us adults are not trustworthy enough to be able to decide for ourselves whether we are capable of seeing such a film.